the last great american dynasty

betty

  James felt confident as he stepped out of his seaside home and onto the broken cobblestones that lead him to school.

  That was a lie.

  His heart was shaking inside his chest, and its heartbeat had been amplified to where he could hear the blood flowing past his ears. Every step felt heavier after the other, and his senses were all heightened. The cars beeping on the street that usually didn't affect him made him flinch. He didn't sleep well last night with those sensations pumping through his veins, which caused him to toss and turn in the sheets and sweat through the night.

  And they had nothing to do with becoming a senior or it being the last year of high school.

  The last week of August, a week ago, was when Betty returned from her vacation, and he had not received a letter or seen her since her return. He was mindlessly riding on his skateboard when he just so happened to pass her house. His heart sank to the point where he had to stop. Her house looked colder than ever with all the lights being off. Even though Betty was online one doorbell away from him, he felt as though a whole state was what separated them.

  Inez Hill was the town gossip, claiming that she "had her own sources to the latest news of St. Louis". When the bakery owner, Danielle, rejected her partner's proposal and left him crestfallen on the dancefloor, it spread like wildfire and everyone in town called her " the girl with champagne problems" and "the girl who was too stuck in her head" (to which Inez contributed immensely on the names) until she left. Inez must have caught on and dug her heels into the road until she found evidence, to which she apparently had found some.

  Did Leah tell Ine -? he thought but stopped himself. She wouldn't dare put herself out for humiliation, at least he thought she wouldn't. By the time he was deep into his spiraling thoughts, he had arrived at school where the bell had started ringing.

  The atmosphere shifted as soon as he walked up to the school entrance. His classmates paused whatever they were doing and just looked at him. Some cringed at the sight of him, some just stared wide-eyed, and some, Inez's group of friends, in particular, snorted and coughed to hide their laughter. It all continued until he stepped into the empty male restroom, in which he threw his bag onto the tiles and gripped the porcelain sink to the point where he swore he might have cracked it.

  After standing there for a few minutes, he lowered his head as he made his way to his homeroom classroom, which was half full at the time of his arrival. He sat in his usual spot in the middle of the classroom, reserving a seat for Betty, hoping that would be a way of talking to her.

  But she never came.

  He didn't like making assumptions, because his guessings were always wrong, but he assumed that she had switched her homeroom class. He also guessed that her actions were because of him. She was avoiding him like the plague, which James knew very well why.

  Inez walked into the classroom with one of her friends and they looked at him before whispering and giggling. Thinking about Inez, Betty usually rolled her eyes at her and her pack. Her contrarian wit was something that he loved about her, but maybe this time she gave in to the rumors, which were, unfortunately, true this time.

  James looked back in time to figure out where everything went wrong until it clicked. Betty's distance happened right after their junior prom. Things turned south during that school dance. He picked her up at her doorstep where she descended the stairs in a white dress, looking as ethereal as ever, and then they both drove to school. He hadn't wanted to attend the dance, but "you only get one junior prom," Betty had said. She used different tactics to persuade him to take her to prom, which she was successful as she dragged him into the crowded school hall. In the middle of the dance, he felt as though he wanted to empty his stomach. He mumbled that he needed some air and left before Betty could give a response. She'd understand, he thought. But then when he was comfortable enough to enter the school hall, Betty's favorite song was echoing around the room, which made him feel bad that he wasn't dancing with his partner. To have made things even worse, when he finally spotted her, she was laughing along with the boy she was dancing with. Hodges? Wade? He wasn't sure, but it didn't matter. He believed that if she were to not have danced with that boy, this would have never happened.